February 22, 2010

Glenn Greenwald re Obama health care plan

President Obama, in introducing his own health care proposal, exposed a transparent, year-long sham. White House loyalists insisted for months that the president genuinely supported a public option, but they told progressives that there could be no public option in the final bill even though more than 50 Democratic Senators supported it and even though the public option consistently polled as being very popular with Americans.

Why not? Because, they argued, the public option lacked the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster, and there was simply nothing the White House could do to change that.

But the plan President Obama unveiled does not include a public option. If he were truly in favor of it, why would he exclude it from his own plan? . . .